Steel Frame Garden Rooms Vs Hybrid Garden Rooms

Is Steel the Best for Garden Rooms?

The frame of any garden room plays a crucial role in ensuring the building’s structural integrity, offering both stability and long-lasting durability.

While steel frames may seem like the obvious choice for strength, they come with hidden drawbacks that homeowners often miss since the frame is concealed. In this article, we’ll explain why hybrid garden rooms are the superior option for creating a reliable, long-lasting outdoor space.

The Hidden Downsides of Steel Frame Garden Rooms

1. Condensation & Rust

Steel isn’t the best insulating material, so using it for garden rooms can make the structure prone to condensation, which, if prolonged, can cause the frame to rust and compromise its strength. Moreover, the trapped moisture in the steel frame can lead to ventilation issues, potentially creating hazardous conditions for health.

🌿 Green Retreats Alternative: Our garden rooms are built with premium-grade insulation, preventing condensation, and keeping the interior warm, dry, and comfortable all year round. We use durable, low-maintenance materials such as treated timber and composite cladding, designed to withstand the elements without the risk of rust or deterioration.

2. Difficult Temperature Control

Because steel is a poor insulating material, it is challenging to regulate temperature. So, if a garden room is constructed entirely from steel instead of a mixture of wood and steel, it’ll be increasingly difficult to control the temperature within the garden room and will prevent you from using the space all year round unless you incur the additional yet expensive insulation and climate control systems.

🌿 Green Retreats Alternative: Our garden rooms feature high-performance insulation and natural ventilation, keeping your space cool in the summer and warm in the winter, without the need for additional costly modifications.

3. Complex Foundations

Steel is a heavy material that often requires a reinforced foundation to support its weight. This can add to installation costs and complexity. Additionally, assembling a steel frame garden room is not typically a DIY-friendly project, requiring professional builders.

🌿 Green Retreats Alternative: Our garden rooms are designed for hassle-free installation with minimal groundwork required. Our expert team handles everything, ensuring a smooth and efficient process from start to finish.

4. Creaking

A steel frame building has many friction points which when the move and run together causes a very frustrating creak.

🌿 Green Retreats Alternative: Our garden rooms walls are timber, creating a softer break between our steel floors and steel roofs to prevent the friction of steel on steel noise! The walls, roof and floor of our garden rooms are backed up with a 12-year guarantee and designed for a 30-year-life for completely peace of mind.

What Makes Our Hybrid Garden Rooms So Unique?

Our innovative construction features hybrid garden rooms that combine a meticulously engineered timber frame with a sturdy and reliable steel floor and roof. This fusion of materials ensures that each garden room is built to last, with all components properly coated, treated, and protected against issues like rising damp, warping, natural growth, and rot. Designed with breathable membranes, air gaps, and premium insulation, our hybrid garden rooms offer year-round comfort and exceptional durability. Plus, they’re backed by a comprehensive 12-year guarantee and a 30-year expected lifespan.

Steel Roof:

✅ Maintenance free

✅ Coated to prevent natural growth

✅ Strong and secure for 30 year-life

✅ Fully insulated with thick sandwiched high density foam

Steel Floor:

✅ Superior strength

✅ 100% water resistant to stop rising damp

✅ Fully insulated with thick sandwiched high density foam

Timber Frame Walls:

✅ Stops the friction of steel on steel to eliminate very annoying creaking

✅ Fully insulated and breathable with layers of complex insulation that encourage moisture out of the building

Why Choose a Hybrid Garden Room?

1. Fully Insulated for Year-Round Comfort

A key advantage of hybrid garden rooms is their superior insulation. Unlike basic garden sheds or steel frame structures that can be uncomfortably hot in summer and freezing in winter, our garden rooms are designed for year-round use. The high-quality insulation ensures you stay warm in the colder months and cool when temperatures rise, providing a consistently comfortable environment no matter the season.

2. Low-maintenance & Built to Last

Unlike steel frame garden rooms that are prone to rust, hybrid garden rooms offer the best of both worlds: durability with minimal upkeep. The advanced materials used in construction are designed to withstand the elements, ensuring longevity without the hassle of constant maintenance. 

💡 Did you know that our garden rooms have a 30 year life span! 

3. Eco-Friendly Materials

All our hybrid garden rooms as built on a polymer create foundation system that reduces concrete use by 70%, made from 100% recycled and recyclable materials. Our composite pads, cladding, and decking are also crafted from recycled materials, with timber sourced responsibly from FSC-certified suppliers.

🔎 If you want to know more about what makes our garden rooms eco friendly, why not read our eco policy!

4. Smart Design from the Ground Up

While many steel buildings share a similar timber exterior, the real difference lies beneath the surface. Our garden room sub-floors are engineered to sit clear of the ground, allowing air to circulate and completely removing any risk of rising damp.

Built for performance, the sub-floor system features 80mm of polyurethane insulation sandwiched between two protective sheets, delivering excellent thermal efficiency and long-term durability.

What really sets it apart? It’s fire-resistant, incredibly robust, and designed to support a load of 300kg per square metre comfortably. That’s serious strength and a key reason steel structures are in a league of their own.

What is the better garden room?

While steel frame garden rooms may look appealing on the surface, they often fall short where it really matters, comfort, durability, and ease of use. Our hybrid garden rooms deliver on all fronts, offering a smart, stylish, and sustainable solution that’s made to last!

📸 Take a look at our stunning designs and get inspired!